Transcending Ego: Distinguishing Consciousness from Wisdom Transcending Ego: Distinguishing Consciousness from Wisdom (Tib. namshe yeshe gepa) of Rangjung Dorje, The Third Karmapa With a Commentary by The Venerable Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche Geshe Lharampa Translated by Peter Roberts Copyright © 2001 by Thrangu Rinpoche All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from Thrangu Rinpoche or Namo Buddha Publications. Namo Buddha Publication PO Box 1083 Crestone, CO. 81131-1083 Email: [email protected] Rinpoche’s website: www.rinpoche.com ISBN 0-9628026-1-1 Library of Congress Card Number: 00-109448 Acknowledgments We would like to thank Peter Roberts for translating the root text and Thrangu Rinpoche’s commentary. We would also like to thank Gaby Hollmann for transcribing and editing the teachings, and Sarah Harding for painstakingly checking the manuscript and Jirke Hladis for the chart on page 12. We would also like to thank Pönlop Rinpoche for his advice on the manuscript. Note Technical words are italicized the first time that they are used to alert the reader that their definitions may be found in the Glossary. To help the Buddhist practitioner, the Tibetan words are given as they are pronounced, not spelled. With every province of Tibet pronouncing words differently, the pronunciations are rough approximations. The actual spelling of Tibetan words are, however, given in the Glossary of Tibetan Terms. We also use the convention of using B.C.E. (Before Current Era) for “B. C.” and C.E. (Current Era) for “A. D.” The Table of Contents Editor’s Foreword vii Translator’s Preface xiii 1. An Introduction to the Text 1 PART I: THE EIGHT CONSCIOUSNESSES 2. The Mind as the Source of Delusion and Nondelusion 13 3. All Appearances Are the Mind 19 4. How the Eight Consciousnesses Cause Delusion 31 PART II: THE FIVE WISDOMS 5. Transformation of the Consciousnesses into Wisdoms 49 6. Summary of the Treatise 73 Notes 79 Glossary 91 Glossary of Tibetan Terms 109 Annotated Bibliography 113 Index 117 Rangjung Dorje, the Third Karmapa (1284-1339 C.E.) Editor’s Foreword Two and a half millennia ago the Buddha proposed that all our happiness and all of our suffering are due to one thing: our mind. After his own realization he spent the rest of his life giving teachings on how we can work with the mind to achieve complete peace, nirvana, or enlightenment. The basic way of working with mind is through meditation. The Buddha began by teaching tranquillity (Skt. shamatha) and insight (Skt. vipashyana) meditation which are practiced by Buddhists all over the world. This path, called the sutra path, is a very steady and gradual path. Except in the case of a few exceptional individuals, it takes many lifetimes of meditation to achieve enlightenment using the practices of the sutra path. To practice the Buddhist teachings, regardless of sect or style, one should begin by practicing the accumulation of great merit, the development of pure conduct, and engaging in Shamatha and Vipashyana meditation. There are many excellent books on the sutra path by great Theravada teachers, Zen masters, and Tibetan lamas. Thrangu Rinpoche’s The Practice of Tranquillity and Insight is one of these books. Another path leading to enlightenment is the Vajrayana path. If one applies oneself with great effort to the practice of the Vajrayana, it is possible to achieve enlightenment rapidly. As pointed out many times by Thrangu Rinpoche, the goal of enlightenment, is exactly the same for all paths. The choice is in the method one pursues. Both the sutra and Vajrayana methods have been extensively practiced in Tibet. One of the most important Vajrayana meditations is the meditation of the Mahamudra or “great seal.” Looking directly at the mind is the method. To understand Mahamudra meditation, it is important to identify our mental process. The examination of the nature of mind, how thoughts arise, where they dwell, and disappear leads to profound insights. This text on consciousness and wisdom is a detailed map of what is perceived when one engages in this process of looking into the mind. Rangjung Dorje begins with a description of the eight mental consciousnesses and describes each in terms of what it does and how it leads us to perceive our world incorrectly. Because these eight consciousnesses cause us to see the world in a deluded way, we continue to live in samsara and this causes us to continue to experience unhappiness, frustration, dissatisfaction, and emotional upheavals. Rangjung Dorje, one of the great Buddhist thinkers of his time, in this text brings together the Abhidharma literature of the Theravadins, the Mahayana doctrines on emptiness, the Mind-only writings of the Chittamatrins, and the practice of examining mind directly through Mahamudra. After this description of the eight consciousnesses he explains how these are transformed into the five wisdoms that manifest in the mind at the time of the attainment of enlightenment. Central to all discussions on the nature of reality in the Mahayana and Vajrayana levels of Buddhism is the concept of emptiness. Emptiness (Skt. shunyata) is actually the fundamental characteristic of material phenomena. This is treated slightly differently in two traditions in Tibet. One tradition, the Shentong tradition, to greatly simplify, holds that Buddha-nature pervades all sentient beings and it is this tathagatagarbha which is the potential for all sentient beings to reach Buddhahood. The Rangtong tradition holds that everything is empty of inherent existence and so Buddha-nature cannot exist in everyone as a permanent quality. These slightly different views of the Shentong and Rangtong view are given in more detail in Hookam’s book The Buddha Within. This treatise by Rangjung Dorje is an important text of the Shentong view, which differs slightly from the Rangtong presentation of consciousness and wisdom. In addition Rangjung Dorje held a few views which were different from the traditional Chittamatra view. The presentation, particularly of the transformation of the actual consciousnesses into wisdoms is based on Rangjung Dorje’s realization. Thrangu Rinpoche reviewed the section of the transformation of consciousnesses into wisdoms to make sure the text conformed exactly to what Rangjung Dorje had proposed. The Treatise Distinguishing Consciousness from Wisdom was written by the eminent scholar, the Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje. Like most other texts on Mahamudra practice, this treatise is not in the form of a scholarly thesis, but in the form of a song of realization, or doha. A spiritual song distills the realization of the Vajrayana practitioner in verse, with each line usually having nine syllables. This particular text is very compact and comprises only thirty-six verses. In the nineteenth century the great scholar, Jamgon Kongtrul, wrote a longer commentary on this treatise to help clarify its meaning. Thrangu Rinpoche consulted Jamgon Kongtrul’s commentary when he taught on this doha. In the Tibetan tradition a student first memorizes these root verses as a part of his or her religious studies. The student then requests a lama, known not only for his or her scholarly accomplishment and understanding of the text, but also for the lama’s realizations, to give a lengthy line-by-line commentary on the root text. Presented in this text is both a translation of this great vajra song and a commentary by Thrangu Rinpoche, an eminent scholar of Buddhism who possesses the above qualities. With this text the Western student of Buddhism can have the experience of being able to study a profound text with a commentary by an excellent scholar of Tibetan Buddhism just as students in the Buddhist monasteries of Tibet have done for the past millennium. Distinguishing Consciousness from Wisdom is an important text on psychology, as well as Buddhist philosophy. Rangjung Dorje arrives at conclusions about how the mind works which are far different from what modern Western psychology would suggest. To illustrate this, I will briefly summarize the arguments of the text, not in the order presented in the text, but in a Western framework. First, Buddhist meditators have reported since the first century of our era that everything is “empty.” Physicists in the twentieth century have put forward a similar conclusion. We are told in modern physics that solid matter is not made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, but are actually made up of energy patterns. The physicist Bohm has said poetically, “matter is crystallized light.” It is well known that solid objects are actually 99.99% “empty” space and the atoms that make up solid objects are actually moving at incredible speeds. In a recent book Michael Talbot presents information from experiments in modern physics that suggest this vast universe we live in is a giant hologram. This scientific theory may explain how some clairvoyant individuals, including many realized lamas, can know what is happening thousands of miles away or even years into the past or future. Rangjung Dorje in this text begins his exposition by refuting the view that a god or gods created a solid universe and that instead the universe is actually empty of inherent existence. The second argument is that Buddhist meditators have known from at least the fourth century of our era that it is the human mind, or more specifically, human awareness that has created the illusion of a solid universe. They point out that individuals have reincarnated for thousands of lifetimes and in each of these lives they have had extensive experience with material objects and that these experiences have been stored in their mind (in what is called the eighth consciousness). In Western science the scientific proof in reincarnation lies in the methodology of past life regression and it is unfortunate that hard scientific investigation has yet to be made to demonstrate whether individuals in this lifetime can recall events and facts about their previous lives that was not gained by any source in this lifetime.